Sandwich Thief: A conversation in time
by ravenandbb4ever
Summary: In Teen Titans Go! episode sandwich thief, when Beast Boy and Cyborg prank called them future selves, Cyborg's call seemed to go relatively well while Beast Boy's ended in tears. My take on how the other side of the conversation went and why it made Beast Boy so sad. Better than it sounds.


As Raven stood, staring outside the window that had seen her most fond memories, for the first time since she was a teenager, she started to feel her control slip. It had happened today. She had known for months that it would, but no matter how much she had tried to prepare herself, all of it proved to be futile in this moment.

Her friends were standing behind her, arranging funeral arrangements, and offering silent support, she just wished that they were not there so that she could be alone. But yet she was fearful as to what would happen when she was alone, as she had not been truly alone in this world in over ten years, and now she was.

Beast Boy, Changeling, Garfield, her sweet Gar, had died that day. The disease that he had been cursed and blessed with when he was only a child took him today.

She remembered the day 7 months ago when he fainted during a mission and she begged him to go see a doctor, but after months of erratic health and behaviour as well as constantly arguing her point, when he finally saw a doctor, it proved to be too late. Selfish man. Why had he not listened to her? He might still be alive today, even if his heart would beat for just a month longer, it would have been worth it. Now all that was left of him was a cold, pale, and weak empty vessel, that carried nothing of the beast boy that she knew. Selfish, lovable, stupidly unselfish man, for keeping his job as a hero even when it was discovered that changing forms would only speed up the process.

The Sakutia had finally won and had spread quickly to his entire body like dreaded cancer cells. The medicine that his parents had given him had run it's course and no one alive could reproduce it. His heart and lungs grew weak, making him short of breathe just from sitting up. His thyroid was failing making his weight fluctuate and his cells in his skin was failing making him lose all body hair.

He had not care about any of the symptoms, in till the day that he lost his powers. They had been asleep in bed and Raven had woken up to a crying scream and tears streaming down her husband's face. "I can't do it anymore, I can't do it anymore, I can't do it anymore…." When she had finally gotten him calm enough to speak to her as to what he could not do anymore he had just stared at her with a horrified, and frightened, look on his face for a few minutes before speaking. "If I am not a hero, Raven, than what am I? What is my worth to society anymore… to you anymore? I could take the weight gain and the shortness of breath because I still had some worth! But now…I just suddenly realized that I am going to die very soon, and I am scared Raven. I am so scared of leaving you before I am ready, or of you leaving before I go because you cannot handle it. Of never seeing our daughter grow up…" He then had burst into tears again with uncontrollable shakes and Raven had never felt so useless in all her life.

Of course she had been the reason that he had lived so long in the first place, having artificially extending the deadline of his treatment for years, but all the research, all her accursed powers, were for nought.

He was gone now. Gone.

She remembered holding his hand just the previous night as he had taken the last of his breaths, watching the lights go out in his eyes that had been her saviour and sanctuary. Their sleeping daughter, just in the other room, not even aware that her father had just died, haven been born only 4 months prior. So blissfully unaware of the pain that her mother and father had just gone through. Her Beast Boy had looked at her with that same sad smile that she had known for years, just on a very different face. But the fang was still present and his ears dropped at the tips like they had always done when he was trying to keep in silent tears and failing.

He had squeezed her hand not thirty minutes before his passing and said, "You know what Raven? I…don't regret… a thing. Not the…Sakutia… or the constant changing forms…because…Raven…it led me… to you. And…I could never… ever…..regret…you. Even if…you are sometimes… a gloomy…pain in the ass." This earned an almost laugh from her that she was sure would be the last of its kind. "Take care… of our daughter… and do not despair…you… are stronger than…you think. You will…survive… and thrive. I love you…Raven…so very…very much. Please…do not let go…of my hand…for I am terrified…of something that is…not this Earth."

She had squeezed his hand even tighter and held the cold digits to her mouth for a kiss. As he looked at her with scared and loving eyes she remembered how he had told her that fateful night, that he lost his powers, that he was not scared of dying, but what came after death, to both himself, and to his family. As they would be beyond his control or reach.

Garfield's eyes had closed and for a moment of panic she had realized that they might never open again, even with the hope that clung to the small and far apart movements of his chest. That might have been the last time that he was awake and looking at her. But that fear proved to be unjust when he opened his eyes not five minutes later to look at her as though he was trying hard to stay alive for this one last thing that he knew he had to do.

"My tofu…and I…are fighting…a…duel to the…..death. One or… the… other of…us…has…to go." Gar than broke into a fit of wheezing and trying to catch his breath before Cyborg came in with what was to be his last batch of morphine. When he drifted off towards his final sleep he very weakly smiled at her as though they had shared a private joke, which they had.

She remembered the day, when they were teenagers and she hated him still, when she found him on the couch reading one of her heavy books. She was more surprised at his reading than his mad at his obvious intrusion of her room and had asked him why he was reading the book of last words of famous people other than his normal comic book. He had looked at her with sad eyes that always tried to make a joke of everything and told her that when his parents he had never gotten to hear their last words. That he had flown off before they had fully been underneath the water and the last words that his mother had yelled at him had been garbled by the sound of the water.

She had, at the time, been surprised by his death and actual feeling besides laziness or desperation to be the class clown, and for the first time, in that afternoon, that she felt as though she could connect with the green skinned boy.

They had had a conversation that night on English literature and how it interconnected to some poetic last words and she had even admitted to him that night that her favorite author was Oscar Wilde instead of what the assumption was of Edgar Allen Poe. He had immediately found Wilde's last words in the book and read it aloud to her, "'My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.' Wow…that was an interesting sentiment considering those would be the last words that he would utter." And for the first time since she had first meet him she felt like laughing, never had been introduced to this side of Beast Boy and his humor before.

She liked this side.

It was the turning point of their relationship.

And now the almost exact last words that he had once laughed at were now his own. Bringing their love story to a close with a quote that had personal meaning to the both of them. And she found that the only person she wanted to discuss his last words with, was him.

The panic when he had closed his eyes that time had been much more real, and now she knew why, as his heart ceased to beat not twenty five minutes later. The slow beeping of the monitor having slowed down, and finally stopped, she found herself alone in the room.

Cyborg and the others had had to run of the deal with some villain and his threat of atomic bombing the entire continent. She understood why they had to go. But she wished that she would not have had to been alone in those final moments of his breathing and the moments after the beeping and rising and falling of his chest had stopped.

Now they were home and had ushered her out of the room that now contained her dead husband, where she had been sitting by his side for the past several hours.

As she stared out the window and at the tree that she knew contained the time capsule that Beast Boy (with the help of Cyborg and Nightwing as he had been too weak) was buried the day that her daughter was born. So that she would someday understand how much her parents loved each other and what life was like when she was born, he had said. She had promised to not open it to the day that their little girl graduated high school, but the desperation of wanting to be close to him and anything that was his was making her desperate to go and unbury that capsule.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she heard Cyborg's communicator go off in the distance only to be followed by Beast Boy's own in her hand a few minutes later. Perhaps it was habit that made her answer the call or maybe it was meant to be…but in her out of body state she answered the call.

When she first heard the voice that she was sure would only exist in her memory she almost collapsed on the floor. "Hi, is…uh….Beast Boy there?"

She heard the laughter in his voice and the slight nasal sound that his abnormal anatomy had caused when he was younger. It was his voice! What type of cruel trick was this?! But before she could ask who the heck this was and to please leave her alone to grieve, she told him what had happened to her husband as she was used to responding to the questions that the same voice used to ask.

"Ummm… (a deep breath) he passed away last night."

"He… he did?"

"Yes, I am sorry to have to inform you of this tragedy."

"How?"

"The Sakutia that he had been diagnosed with as a child was slowly killing him all his life. It finally killed him last night."

"Really? Wow, I am… um… sorry to hear that."

She could hear the beginnings of tears in his eyes before she heard the line go dead, already feeling the loss of his voice, artificial or not. Why had she told what happened to Beast Boy with whatever person, that was on the end of the computer system, that artificially created Gar's voice? It did not matter now, as the line was dead, but she wished to have spent more time with that voice as she needed to hear his voice and had already started listening to his voicemail's over and over again.

She heard Cyborg talk about some stranger who had pulled the refrigerator gag on him and how sometimes he hated human beings to be calling his personal communicator at a time like this. They did not even have the excuse of not knowing as everyone in Jump City had been notified of their hero's death and funeral arrangements. He would not have wanted all this attention to his death and funeral, to the public he may have seemed to be in it for the fame and recognition, at least to a certain degree, but Raven knew that he did it so that no kid would have to spend their childhood without a parent due to crime. And now his only child would spend her childhood without her father.

Her child would never remember, but Raven could remember for her.

She went to her baby, as she had started to fuss and her maternal instincts had kicked in and kept her going at least for the sake of her child, and looked down at the pale green face. Their daughter looked like the father that she would never know and despite the feeling of despair and loneliness that had come with her only love's death, she knew that he was right about one last thing.

They should not regret a single thing.


End file.
